Contrôle de production écrite : imagine you are the narrator and write about what
happened to you during the war. (Start at the railway station / don’t forget to write about past
habits)
Corrigé:
Evacuation
In the first year of the war our father signed up, so our mother decided to send us to Australia
because her aunt lived there.
Suzy and I were very sad to leave our family and friends, yet we had to go, to avoid German
bombs.
One morning our mother took us to a crowded railway station. We could only have a small
suitcase each.
When we said goodbye, we were all crying. How long would we remain separated? Suzy was
holding my hand and we followed the other children.
We took a train to Portsmouth, and then we sailed to Australia. Suzy was seasick and I had to
comfort her, because she kept crying. She was frantic; she missed our mother so much! I
remembered my promise to dad and tried to behave as a man. Yet I was only an eight-yearold boy who didn’t know what was expecting him in Australia. We had never seen aunt Mary,
as she had left England just after the First World War to follow her Australian husband.
However after a week at sea we landed safely and aunt Mary met us in Sydney. She was a
lovely old lady and she reminded me of my grandmother, her sister Jane.
In fact we had a great time in Australia because our aunt Mary and her husband, uncle Jack,
lived on a ranch. Every day we would get up very early to take the bus to school (our school
was ten miles away from the ranch). The Australian teachers were much nicer than the British
teachers. We met new friends. I remember I was particularly fond of a little girl named Joan;
she was my first love. I wonder if she still remembers me…
On Sundays we would also get up early to look after the cattle. Uncle Jack taught us how to
milk a cow or ride a horse.
He would also take me hunting. I learned how to handle a gun. We would hunt rabbits, of
course, but also kangaroos! I tried kangaroo steak for the first time and it tasted delicious.
What an adventurous life we led! To us, city children, Australia was the land of freedom.
Jack and Mary had two sons, three daughters, and eleven grandchildren who all wanted to
please us and make us forget the war.
Of course I missed my parents; but mum and dad would send us letters regularly and our
Australian family was so nice that we never really felt homesick. We stayed with them for six
years, only returning home at the end of the war. When we left them, in July 1945, I was
feeling both happy and sad, as I knew I would never see Mary and Jack again. You see, in
those days, people didn’t use to travel as much as they do today.
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Corrigé: dictation:
Evacuation in World War II :
In the first year of the war, to avoid German bombs, 1.5 million children were evacuated from
the cities to rural regions like northern Wales.
Whole schools were moved and the evacuees would find themselves at crowded railway
stations with an identity label, a gas mask and a small suitcase.
They would then discover country life for the first time, and many remained separated from
their parents for months or years, only returning home at the end of the war.